The Down Low on the High Tech Women Workforce: Numbers Could Be Better

Download this: for all the achievements high technology has accomplished in recent years at bringing different people together, when it comes to the high-tech workplace, women are still being left out.

That’s the troubling conclusion reached by the Level Playing Field, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that researches educational and workforce inequality. Their data, released last week, reveals that women working at high tech IT and startup companies continue to feel isolated compared to their male peers – and even feel belittled and bullied in the work place, resulting in high job dissatisfaction. And, despite encouraging signs that women make up 46% of the workforce and half of all college graduates, a paltry 22% include the high-tech marketplace – an area critical for 21^st century advancement.

So why don’t women feel more empowered to successfully tackle tech? There are many theories – here’s a snapshot of two:

#1 – With all that has changed in the American workforce in recent decades, it’s hard to remember that only a short while ago, women, were relegated to secondary positions in male-dominant corporate hierarchies. Is there a residue of (outdated) beliefs still filtering through the last bastions of male-only (or mostly male) domains?

#2 – The age-old throwaway: “Women and technology don’t mix.” I always find that one amusing considering the first waves of modern office and domestic inventions were consistently in the stereotyped sphere of women’s use.

The bottom line? Technology and women do mix. Women-led startups generate higher revenue per dollars of invested capital and have lower failure rates, according to Cindy Padnos, founder of Illuminate Ventures, a venture capital firm catering toward woman business leaders. Women-run high tech companies, her research found, had annual revenues that were 12% higher, using a third less capital.

It’s fitting, perhaps, that October is National Bullying Prevention month. While the initiative –a collective work by a variety of nonprofits –is geared largely toward children and teens, it’s nevertheless a good time to remember that bullies, like other bad apples in a high school or college class, graduate too. Upon receiving their diploma where do they go? The office.

As Public Relations professionals –an industry that has enjoyed an unprecedented male-female flip-flop with 85 percent of the field’s employees being women – we can work with our male and female clients alike, helping them craft a more balanced message about who they’re looking to recruit internally and who their products or messages are directed toward externally. Nobody likes a bully and everyone can afford to be a little more inclusive. Now that this boss (who happens to be a woman) is about to get her own cup of coffee, (don’t need an assistant of either sex for that) let me post this high tech blog –before I magically forget how.

You know…. ‘cause I’m a woman. Please.

Message Not Sent: Public Eager to Adopt Mobile Buying; Businesses Not So Much

For a three-word sentence, “Message not sent,” does a pretty good job at frustrating text messagers from completing and sending their digital thoughts. And when it comes to m-commerce, ‘M’ for mobile, businesses it seems, haven’t gotten the message either.

A new survey compiled by Empirix reveals a mixed message: 91 percent of American shoppers believed mobile buying for anything from airline tickets, to department store purchases, to all items in between by text message, email or smart phone app, will generally benefit their shopping experience, while nearly two-thirds of respondents expected an improvement in customer service via their mobile outlet.

But like a garbled message trapped in the Internet ether, fewer than half of businesses surveyed in several countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, said they’d be investing money toward establishing m-commerce networks. The US, which often plays second fiddle (or third, or fourth) to tech-savvy Europe, was a relative “winner,” with 41 percent of businesses saying they would. Better still; more than half of US businesses said they at least had a mobile strategy in place. By contrast only 14 percent of UK businesses were game for upgrading from ‘E’ to m-commerce.

Dealing with the digital disconnect

That’s where PR companies come into play. Playing the watchdog role for our clients means it’s our job to inform them when it’s time to enhance their business and marketing models, offering concrete mobile marketing suggestions and strategy. In short, just having a web page is so last decade. As seen on airlines, mobile onboard buying campaigns have really taken off. (Pardon the pun)

If airlines can be persuaded to the see the benefits of turning a jumbo jet’s cabin into a touch and click sky mall, then why not other businesses?

To be sure, an m-commerce-embracing public and a plugged in communications industry are only the first steps toward success. But they’re not bad starts. In Empirix’s press release on the study, Tim Moynihan, VP of Marketing cautioned companies against quantity of mobile initiative versus quality of effort.

“As more businesses deliver m-commerce applications to an increasing number of consumers, the risk of poor service increases dramatically,” he said. “Investing in an end-to-end service assurance program at the start of this journey will separate the winners from the losers.”

An “end to end service assurance program,” huh.

Sounds like the perfect job for us.

Why almost everything that Apple’s PR machine does turns to gold

The following article originally appeared on Mobile Marketer on October 3rd, 2011.

I started writing this article the morning after the media vultures started picking over Steve Jobs' resignation carcass. Why add more fuel to the Apple fire, I thought.

It has been “Apple this” and “Apple that” for longer than I care to remember. So I put down my notes.

Now, more than five weeks later, the world has not ended with Steve Job no longer at Apple’s helm. Its shares have not plummeted. The iPhone 5 will likely dominate 2011 holiday sales. And, in the process, Apple became the most valuable company on the stock market.

Life continues, and so I write.

Give an apple to the teacher, as the cliché goes, and you stand a better chance of getting in their good books.

But in a very real sense, for the better part of its existence, Apple has been the company that has given us the apple and kept the public relations spinmeisters and media industry singing the company’s praises – right down to its very core.

So how has Apple kept us plugged in?
Consider this: Twenty-five years ago tech was geek. Majorly geek.

Tech was for nerds who were shunned by the masses. They were the ones who rode bikes or skateboards when we bought our first shiny BMW. They discovered iPods while we were still ooohing at clunky MP3 players. We got hammered at parties while they wrote code wired on Mountain Dew.

Who’s laughing now?

They are, all the way to their tech-stock engorged portfolios. Today, tech is très, très chic, and much of that chic transformation goes to Apple.

It is not every day that a balding, lanky, somewhat geeky man can command the stage, holding a twinkling device that promises the universe but is only a phone/music player/tablet attain rock star status.

Yet, Steve Jobs and Apple have done just that, launching hit, after hit. As Kool and The Gang sang back in the ’80s, “He’s got the Midas Touch.”

In the PR trade, it is usually us who are the ones drawing the lines and making the rules – or we like to think so anyway.

In the case of Apple, however, we have been entranced – or is it enchanted? – right along with consumers. I cannot image doing our work without an iSomething to hand and it is hard to imagine a world without Apple.

The Apple R&D folks create what often kicks off long and gushing reviews of the company’s line of firsts, but it is the marketing department which really goes to town on the behind-the-scenes work – even though it goes out of its way to appear not to.

Not all about what’s under the tech hood
While we sell our well-honed communications skills – skills that are supposed to help our clients develop strategies that communicate their messages with pinpoint accuracy – Apple’s PR strategy has been the opposite. Obfuscate, block, and say nothing.

Mix that in with lots of hype, cult-like adoration and oodles of staging, and you have the only brand that is globally tolerated for its “magic of misdirection.” Any other brand would be excommunicated from the journalism world, but not Apple.

Take the iPhone 5 prototype “accident” from a few weeks ago. Left at a bar, the only prototype available. Just like that.

A similar watering hole mishap occurred last year with the iPhone 4.

Although Apple says nothing, the publicity rumor mill speeds away at over four megabits a second. Did Apple deliberately lose a new phone to generate buzz? Was it to lap Android in a sort of subtle way, “We’ve done it again, you suckers?”

Even if the iPhone 5’s loss was a five-alarm fire of genuine concern does not much matter. Nineteenth-century showman P.T. Barnum is often credited with the expression, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

Mr. Jobs and Apple have polished that phrase to an all new sheen.

Apple, truly, has broken all conventions when it comes to media and PR strategy, from allegedly misleading the press – Electronic Games, 2007; the delayed Korea launch – to letting its fanatics have a free-for-all without saying much to deflate some, at times, far-fetched theories.

As someone with a vested professional interest in damage control, I have to admit that Apple is a PR treat to devour.

Instead of taming the media beast with a crisis strategy or even strategically controlled messaging, it has let the media beast feed on itself by strategically saying nothing at all.

Think about for that a couple of minutes.

For all the talk of CEOs and corporate communications teams stepping up and commenting the second a negative tweet or blog post appears, Apple has done the opposite. Its lack of response when it comes to conjecture only makes any actual responses all the more poignant.

Company that talks little but says much
Since Apple is regularly seen as observers in the melee, when it does speak, we listen.

Notable instances include the company’s denial of tracking iPhone and iPad users – which we know is a lie; we are tracked and yet we still do not much care – or when Steve Jobs' illness was finally clarified (way more serious than we thought).

Both instances could have been far more damaging for any other brand.

But Apple's product launch rumors and news kept us magically distracted.

In late April, we were talking about the tracking rumors. By mid-May, we were discussing a new product launch – a 180-degree turnaround in just 15 business days.

When we were talking about Mr. Jobs' health issues – for the third time – in January 2011, we were also knee-deep in iPad 2 news. His health, it seemed, played second fiddled to the life-changing promise of the iPad 2.

Humility: Great for philosophers, the religious, and repentant politicians during an election cycle; bad for Mr. Jobs and Apple.

Perhaps I am being too harsh: the media industry is human, after all, and we are suckers for strong personalities, bravado or otherwise.

In 1983, Apple, still a seedling of its present self, launched the ambitious Lisa computer.

With a staggering near-$10,000 price tag – $21,589 in today’s dollars – Mr. Jobs and Apple aggressively marketed their product.

Confidence may not have helped sell Lisa to a price-conscious consumer – Lisa was pretty much dead on arrival – but similar stances on a myriad of Apple products since have ultimately turned it from a computer company to an icon.

To continue reading this article, please click here to go to Mobile Marketer.

Old School Media Is Still Relevant, For Now

By: Vanessa Horwell

For all the funerals planned and obituaries written for traditional journalism — those things called newspapers, magazines, broadcast television, oh, and radio — one would consider them finished. Just how many years of revenue and circulation declines can an industry endure before packing it in?

Plenty, it seems.

Without question the last five years, or even 10, have not been kind to traditional media. Its influence has shrunk from a global superpower to merely a component of an increasingly diverse set of media outlets all vying for attention and relevancy. I liken traditional media’s current power position to the United Kingdom following World War II: Stripped of its empire status, the war-torn country reemerged as a component of Western power, no longer its sole mover and shaker, or indeed master.

In response to a rapidly remade media landscape, PR firms have rightly shifted their focus to all things digital. Can you imagine a PR company — or any successful organization — not relying heavily on the digital space to advance their company or client’s brand?

Our clients now expect digital competency as a matter-of-fact and not some retainer-plus extra. Many of the college graduates knocking on our door have been using Facebook for a third of their lives, they prefer texting to talking (which we try to undo) and some have even earned their Masters in social media.

But for all the hoo-ha over social media, it’s essential that companies, especially PR agencies, remember the UK analogy. Traditional media, may be a shell of its former self –at least in terms of average profit margins — but it persists. Our industry gives so much lip service to integration and being multi-channel. Perhaps it’s time we listen to our own advice and not jettison traditional media from the marketing mix?

At a recent mobile marketing summit in New York, I sat next to the mobile marketing director for USA Today, and talked with several digital media directors of magazines that many would consider very traditional – only they are far from it.

Their digital model has and continues to evolve as they realize that traditional media still does have a place — and is it not in the coffin. The PR industry shouldn’t forget this either.

In its annual report on American journalism, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, highlights some positive news hinting that the worst of traditional media’s die off has ended. Newspapers, once a bulwark for our industry, saw its weekday circulation numbers contract by 5% in 2010. While not fantastic, the losses in 2009 were twice that. Revenue too, saw, similar declines, (a drop of 6.3%) but that softening was nowhere near the death spiral of 2009 where revenue atrophied 26%.

The revenue picture looked even brighter at cable news, network television and local news outlets, as all three saw growth. Overall local news and radio faired the best, as many stations added early morning programs. For instance, in 2010 69 US cities offered a 4:30 a.m. TV news program, up from 28 in 2009. Radio, which has long since found its niche on car dashboards, saw revenue tick upward by 6% in 2010 after an 18% fall in 2009. Finally, magazine ad revenue was flat, compared to a 26% drop in ’09. While readership/viewership struggled, all traditional media outlets combined still enjoyed many millions of consumers.

As for the fine print beneath the big picture?

The reports of old school media’s death (in all its forms) are exaggerated. Americans continue to rely on traditional outlets — along with newer ones — to consume information. They are still relevant to many of us, as least for now.

My advice to my PR peeps?

Don’t turn your back on traditional media. Not yet. Remain plugged in with your broadcast and print contacts – don’t overlook them for lure of likes and RTs. While the media pie has gotten bigger and there are more pieces to cut, you never know when you might need them.

Winston Churchill, England’s WWII Prime Minister, cautioned against looking too far ahead into the future, saying, “Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”

Let’s wait and see how the future media chain links connect and how that affects the destiny of traditional media before we sever those ties for good.

Via Marketing Daily

Next Generation’s New Pathways – And Potential Dead Ends, All Just A Click Away

A recent post on the Future of Media (my favourite new blog) predicts that the next big business boom is likely to be in occupational therapy, (OT) and intimacy counselors. Millennials, the generation born post-1985, will increasingly require their services, having become too plugged in to remember that a “friend request” isn’t always a mouse-click away.

Sadly, I don't think this a prediction, it's turning out to be true - and growing. A report, “Cyber Communication on Today’s Youth,” by the American Counseling Association was already ringing alarm bells in 2008. Reading the document three years on, it's fascinating to note how much the digital landscape has changed in such a short period. While Myspace gets at least minor billing, Facebook, which was already 4-years-old at the time, does not receive a single reference.

How the mighty have fallen. Or, more to the point, how the mighty squandered a golden opportunity. But I digress...

If that much can change in three years, it’s rather hard to envision the next 1,100 days. While I'm praying for an economic rebound, I would hate to think that these new, or "reinvigorated" professions would be spurred by society's digital addiction. When President Obama talked of job creation, it's unlikely he was referring to these.

Taking advantage of our "click addiction"

A recent article in the New York Times looks at Americans' growing reliance on their shrinks - online. Can't make it to your weekly couch-session in person? Not a problem. Just fire up Skype and connect with your therapist anywhere. Having an anxiety attack, possibly caused by having to do an "in-person" interview? Get some webcam time with your therapist for an online RX.

And the irony continues..

Driving to the beach this morning, I was reminded of this growing "click-to-counsel" profession: A huge billboard touting a local hospital's ER room "click and book your ER visit online."

The scenario could go something like this..

Have an accident with the automatic carving knife. Put sorn-off finger(s) on ice. Log on to hospital's ER booking system and reserve your place in the ER queue. Wait at home hoping you don't lose conciousness in the meantime, or take a leisurely stroll for a few hours (with ice pack of course), stopping at a drive-thru before your appointed time slot.

“Turn on, tune in,” may have been part of ‘60s countercultural icon Timothy Leary’s well-known phrases. I doubt he would have imagined the phrase’s 21st century impact on the Children of the Sixties' children.

Of course, "click-to-counsel" hadn't been invented then. I wonder what he would have made of that?

Famous Last Words… Think Before You Speak

It would have been wise if John McWhorter, the renowned linguist, political commentator, lecturer, and blogger had taken his own advice from the title of one of his most recent posts: think before you speak.

McWhorter’s post for thedaily.com, last weekend was a controversial piece that in 842 words upended decades worth of linguistic study and knowledge. If we are to assume that different peoples speaking different languages perceive the world through different prisms, he argues, then the so-called “loser” of that arrangement -- the one with a subpar understanding of a given concept, be it love, hate, length of time, etc., etc. is doomed to inferiority.

“Before we celebrate this as showing that people…experience life in a dramatically different way than we do, we should consider that to embrace the idea of language differences as shaping perception in any radical way…denigrates the cognitive abilities of billions of the world’s human beings,” he says.

But ultimately, it’s McWhorter’s analysis that denigrates people, not the beauty and diversity of human perception. In fact, one could argue, that McWhorter’s all-or-nothing lens through which he views language is highly Amerocentric –that winner-take-all mentality that lay at the cornerstone of political beliefs like Manifest Destiny, rugged individualism and laissez-faire capitalism, and today very much resembles Monday night football.

Does this mean Americans view the world in two-dimensional, linear constructs. I do believe that. But that in no way implies that every non-American can’t view the world the same way if they so desired, and says nothing about different cultures, speaking different languages and their cognitive ability. The fact that IQs tend to rise in developed nations speaks –in whatever language you choose – to the power of opportunity, education and experience. It also suggests that most humans regardless of where live, have similar amounts of latent brainpower.

As PR agencies like mine continue adding new clients from across the globe, communication differences will undoubtedly create challenges in translating one idea and concept into another language and cultural context. I don’t know about you, but diminishing our clients’ cognitive abilities doesn’t sound like a good place to start.

Embracing difference, championing our linguistic uniqueness, and working with our clients to “get the message right” seems to me a far better approach.

Print’s Death March, Again

Here we go again. Another article predicting the end of print media, or to be more precise, referring to its now sunset years. A recent post called Editorial Exit on the Future of Media blog, joins a chorus of naysayers predicting the end of the traditional newsroom and dismantling of old school media.

But are we talking about a sunset or merely a solar eclipse?

Without question the last five years (and even 10 years) have not been kind to a host of traditional media. Web 2.0 (or are we nearly 3.0?), running lightening fast, interactive sites and “iWeb” – the Internet’s mobile revolution – is enjoying double-digit percentage growth.

But referring to the present time period as traditional media’s sunset years is premature at best, and dead wrong at worst. In its annual report on American Journalism, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, highlights some quite positive news hinting that the worst of traditional media’s die off has ended. Newspapers, once a bulwark for the communications industry, saw its weekday circulation numbers contract by 5 percent in 2010. While not fantastic, the losses in 2009 were twice that. In revenue terms the picture looked even brighter at cable news, network television and local news outlets as all three saw growth. Certainly, traditional media’s influence has shrunk from a global superpower to a component of an increasingly diverse set of communications outlets, including web sites, mobile apps, blogs, Twitter feeds, and Facebook pages.

The bottom line: Record stores still exist, vinyl can still be purchased, and the “paperless office” has yet to fully mature. Traditional media may no longer be king, but it’s still serving in the king’s court.